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OPTIMUM GOLF TECHNOLOGIES Case Study – SharePoint Online Company Intranet Portal
Optimum Golf Technologies, is a leading supplier and manufacturer of cutting-edge technologies for the golf industry across the EMEA region.
OGT were already users of Microsoft Office 365 including SharePoint Online, but were struggling with some user problems and also failing to see the real benefit of moving their document management away from local and cloud drives and onto SharePoint.

What they needed was a solution where they could collaborate internally on document management as well as with their large external client base. They also needed an aesthetic company-branded Intranet Portal where users could go to be informed about company news, events and other important information, as well as have their say.

Dolphin Networks Solution
To meet OGT’s requirements, Dolphin Networks designed a web-based Intranet portal application using SharePoint Online and hosted using OGT’s already-existing SharePoint Online portal. The landing page of their Intranet was designed beyond the limits of what SharePoint offers out of the box, exactly to the specification desired by the client.

How it works

Leveraging the powerful features already present in SharePoint, such as lists and Office integration, the Intranet portal makes liberal use of JavaScript, jQuery, and CSS in addition to features provided out-of-the-box. This allows functionality beyond what SharePoint already provides, and more closely matches the needs of the client. For example, the SPServices jQuery library allows retrieval of data from the SharePoint back-end to be rendered in a multitude of ways beyond what can be achieved by simply using built in SharePoint Web Parts; while the Unslider library allows the display of animated sliding images to display announcements on the landing page.

Of course, all of the content administration for the custom coded functions can be easily administered by RL’s Intranet admin users through the self explanatory SharePoint front end.

External Access by Clients

OGT also required their clients and external workers to be able to access the Intranet and collaborate on documents but in a more restrictive way than internal staff. Dolphin Networks created an external access section in the Intranet and using SharePoint permission groups and site collections enabled segregation of the external access area from the internal portal. This ensured secure access to documents was maintained.

Testimonial

Good Sharepoint consultants are not easy to find. We know that from experience. Our first consultant developed a system that was un-intuitive and was hard to navigate. Consequently, our staff failed to engage with it, which led to fractured systems that were uncoordinated and inefficient. We wasted a lot of time and money – directly and indirectly – and frankly it was a huge inconvenience to the business. We continued the search for a company that gave us the confidence that they could do something different, and who were also reasonably priced – not an easy task.

But we found Dolphin and everything has changed. Andy and his team understand what a business needs – they are business people themselves – and they know how to develop a Sharepoint system that delivers what your business needs. And in fact our system now delivers a lot more than I thought was possible. We are not a huge company but we now have an intranet system that I thought only large companies could have. This means our staff are more engaged with our business, are more informed and up to date as to what is going on, and also have a bit more fun along the way. And everyone now knows where to find the files, tools and information they need to do their jobs properly – which was of course the core reason for developing it in the first place.

We would highly recommend Dolphin to anyone looking to develop their Sharepoint environment, or wanting to understand what Sharepoint can actually do for their business.

About Dolphin Networks

Dolphin Networks offers full services in SharePoint Consultancy, Office 365, Business Intelligence Applications, Cloud and Mobile computing and Data Warehousing. We also couple this very closely with developing custom applications to provide a front end interface to data driven solutions.

Testimonial

Excellent Service!

We have used Dolphin for a while now and can’t fault them. Would recommend.